History of the German Nazi death camp of Treblinka. Guided tour at the site by dr Tomasz Cebulski. The film was co-produced with Brad Pomerance and JLTV.

Treblinka was one of the German Nazi death camps localized on the German occupied Polish territory during WW II. Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor and Majdanek were designed to mass murder millions of Polish Jews under the cryptonym of "Aktion Reinhard".

The death camp in Treblinka was located in the northeastern region of the Generalgouvernement District - German occupation of former Poland. The camp was erected in a sparsely populated area near Malkinia Gorna, a junction on the Warsaw - Bialystok railway line, 4 km northwest of Treblinka village.

Construction was started in spring 1942 and the camp was ready to receive transports in late July of 1942. SS-Obersturmführer Irmfried Eberl, an expert in euthanasia killing centres in Germany became the camp first commandant. From late August 1942 the command was taken by SS-Obersturmführer Franz Stangl, the former commander of the Sobibor death camp. Treblinka was run with the use of approximately 30 German SS-men and 120 assisting Ukrainian guards. In late 1942 Stangl ordered construction of fake rail station with ticket counters, clock and direction indicators, all this was situated close to the unloading platform. The purpose of this was to lull the arriving victims into believing that they had actually arrived at a transit camp. One of the main objectives of the camp command was to shorten the time needed to murder an arriving transport of Jews. German efficiency was applied. In the initial phase, a section of twenty wagons with 2,000 deportees could be murdered within 3-4 hours. Later the Germans "gained experience" and reduced the duration of the killing process to under 2 hours.

Treblinka

The Lazarett with red cross flag on the top was a fanced off dich close to the unloading platform. In this place children, elderly or injured people were shot and burned in order not to slow down all the process of extermination in gas chambers.

In the reception area Jews were ordered to undress and leave all their belongings. Later they were forced to run through narrow corridor made of two lines of barbed wire camouflaged with branches of trees. This passage was nicknamed a “tube” or "the road to heaven" by the perpetrators. Gas chambers were attached to an engine producing exhaust fumes with lethal carbon monoxide. Close to the gas chambers there were deep ditches for burying the corpses. From winter 1942/43 corpses were exhumed and burned by the Sonderkommando prisoners, instead of being buried. At this stage the elimination of material proofs of crime and denial was initiated.

Treblinka operated from late July 1942 to September 1943. Within those 15 months 738.000 Jews from Generalgouvernement and 107.000 Jews from Bialystok district were murdered. Jews from outside Poland were also victims of Treblinka. They were transported from Slovakia (7000), Terezin (8000), Greece (6800), Macedonia (7000).

On the 2nd of August 1943 a revolt of the Sondercommando inmates broke out. About a 150 inmates managed to escape.

When Treblinka was liquidated in 1943, the camp area was ploughed over and trees were planted. The former camp area was turned into a farm for Ukrainian family who were to protect this place and give it a proper alibi.

Nowadays there is an impressive monument raised in the middle of Treblinka forest. One of its parts are 17.000 irregular granite stones out of which 216 have the names of different Jewish communities engraved.

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